Carrier route record

DLSFO→MSP

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,449
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 75%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SFO to MSP lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,449 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on SFO to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,436 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on SFO to MSP, 1,927 flights

These figures cover 1,449 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SFO to MSP

Delta flew 1,449 of the 1,927 flights on SFO to MSP, most of the route. Its 79.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.6% to SkyWest at 71.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,449	79.6%	60 min	0.83%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	355	77.1%	63 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	123	71.5%	61 min	0.00%	C+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SFO to MSP

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Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am364 flights94.4%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm360 flights65.6%
2pm–5pm359 flights73.1%
5pm–8pm113 flights79.6%
8pm–5am253 flights87.3%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.6% on time against 94.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SFO to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, June worst

June is the worst month at 56.5% on time, 41 points below October, the best at 97.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.0%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on SFO to MSP runs when it is late

Delta on SFO to MSP often beats the schedule: 522 of 1,436 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 293 late arrivals split 104 under half an hour, 108 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 81 an hour or more.

15+ min early522 flights36.4%
Within 15 min621 flights43.2%
15–29 min late104 flights7.2%
30–59 min late108 flights7.5%
1–2 hours late56 flights3.9%
2+ hours late25 flights1.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,436 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

69 of 307 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 55 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on SFO to MSP

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 March 2026, 11 hours 7 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of Delta on SFO to MSP in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 March 2026	11 hours 7 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
28 June 2026	10 hours 12 minutes	Carrier
4 April 2026	8 hours 40 minutes	Carrier
30 December 2025	6 hours 24 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 October 2025	6 hours 15 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
0%

56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. The split is drawn from 17,651 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.4% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.4% on time across 1,449 flights, 14 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 14 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,449 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SFO to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 97.1% on time and June 56.5%, a swing of 41 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,436 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures